On Tuesday, a bill will be voted on and probably pass, that changes the regulations for trespassing on State lands. With this bill, a sign will be all thatʻs required to criminalize trespass on improved state land – currently a warning is needed to receive a petty misdemeanor. The problem with this bill, SB2816 “Relating to Criminal Trespass” is that it is merely a modified version of the existing law on trespass, but with the addition of public lands “or highways” (like the one on Mauna Kea?). One portion reads:

A person commits criminal trespass in the second degree if … the person enters or remains unlawfully on agricultural lands without the permission of the owner of the land … and the agricultural lands … have a sign or signs displayed .. .sufficient to give notice and reading as follows “Private Property” or “Government Property – No Trespassing”

The problem here is that by merely adding “or Government Property” (underlined text denotes the text to be added to the law), the State of Hawaiʻi is treating public land as if it were its own private lands. In American law, this is indeed the case – the government has no special rights over its lands, but is like any other private owner (aside from eminent domain). But Hawaiʻiʻs land system comes from the Kingdom, and thus has embedded in it kuleana, or native tenant rights, which William Little Lee (one of its architects) said “cannot be conveyed away, not even by Royalty itself.” If the King could not abridge these rights, then how can the State of Hawaiʻi, which is not even their owner, but more like their thief? As the 1993 Apology Resolution provides:

This bill seeks to allow the government to bar the public from accessing public land, similar to how a private land owner can bar people from entering private land. This is no good. It criminalizes homelessness, hiking, gathering, fishing… and protesting.

photo: allhawaiinews.com

I heard about the bill in the Star-Advertiser – which sited Igeʻs camp as authors –too late to attend any hearings or give testimony, but legislators can still be called and possibly be persuaded to change their votes and prevent the creation of a kind of open prison in which we are restricted to our own private properties, commercial lands on which we are mere consumers and those public lands of which the state sees fit to allow our use.